To celebrate the start of the
2013 Tour de France I have a review of the perfect book for all French loving,
armchair cyclists, French Revolutions: Cycling the Tour de France
by Tim Moore.
by Tim Moore.
When Tim reignited a passion for
cycling, aged 35 and not actually owning a decent bike, he was inspired to take
on the challenge of the Tour de France, although obviously not as a serious
team competitor. Tim, who wasn’t the fittest, or even the greatest cyclist,
bought himself a bike and set off to cycle the 3630kms of the 2000 proposed
Tour de France route ahead of the main peloton (by a couple of months).
What follows is a journey of
pain, frustration, determination, discovery and above all (for the reader)
humour and lots of it. As a Tour de France novice I really enjoyed the snippets
of Tour history, information and interesting insights Tim added into his
journey. Although for an event where organisation and publicity are key it was
surprising to learn how difficult it was for Tim to get detailed information on
the route. Above all this book is the story of a BIG challenge as Tim tries to
cover similar distances to the professional riders each day and this can be in
the region of 200km. He also takes on the mountain stages with enthusiasm and
trepidation but also with his luggage and without the team support back up –
apart from the times his wife and family make an appearance to cheer him up and
on. Having clocked up a three bike rides this week, totalling a respectful
110km, I take my hat off to Tim for taking on this challenge and having the
energy left to turn it into a great read.
I will be adding this to my TBR list! Thanks!
ReplyDeleteIt is very funny, real Britsh humour!
DeleteI've heard of this book before but not read it yet. I do have his book on Eurovision called Nul Points in the TBR. I should add this one too. I love watching Le Tour from Australia- here it is the depths of winter of course, we sit up late into the night (the broadcast finishes between 1 and 2 am most of the time), I often fall asleep on the couch trying to stay up. We were in France for the tour this year but I hardly saw any of it because we were always out and about doing things during the day. I did get to see the final stage in Paris though, which was tremendous.
ReplyDeleteWow - I'm jealous you got to soak up the atmosphere in Paris. We are 'only' about a four hour drive from Paris and we did give it a bit of a thought this year, but with road tolls, parking and a hotel it was a bit unrealistic, so we watched on TV!
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